1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for feeding, presenting and/or orienting parts. In a first embodiment, parts are fed to a rotatable disc. A conveyor section surrounds at least a portion of this rotatable disc and receives parts therefrom. In a second embodiment, the conveyor simply passes adjacent or tangential the rotating disc. The conveyor can be used to recirculate the parts and a robotic device can be provided for removing oriented or non-oriented parts from the conveyor.
2. Description of the Background Art
Various parts feeding, presentation and/or orienting apparatus are known in the prior art. Some of these apparatus use centrifugal feeders for separating parts. When large parts are used, rather large feeders are necessary. This increases the overall size of the feeding device. Also, most centrifugal feeders work at high speeds and are, therefore, difficult to adapt to robotic systems which require a slower feed of articles.
Accordingly, a need exists for a simple and effective parts feeding, presenting and/or orienting apparatus. This apparatus should have minimal space requirements and should be able to handle various sized parts. In addition, this feeder should provide for presentation, orientation and/or singulation of the parts for subsequent handling. This apparatus should be adaptable for use with robotic devices and should, therefore, be capable of operating at slow speeds.